


however deep the magic lies

by WingedFlight



Series: A Darkened Age [3]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Aslan is a dick, Dark, Gen, Susan is Jadis, Time Shenanigans, there is no problem with Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 10:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedFlight/pseuds/WingedFlight
Summary: There are witches in all worlds.In growing close to her own world, Susan learns the magic to return to her home once more.





	however deep the magic lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AmbientMagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmbientMagic/gifts).



> A recent conversation I had went something like this: 
> 
> “Do you know of any fic in which Susan is Jadis? A friend is asking and I figured you’d know.”  
> “Um, let me check….. Okay. Not that I can immediately find, but holy smokes am I going to write this.” 
> 
> And so: AmbientMagic friend of freudiancascade, this is for you.

* * *

  
_one._  
  
After speaking the Word, Jadis is very tired. Deep Magic has always been taxing, and this was the deepest magic of all. She has stolen the lives of every single being of an entire world; she has cut short all but the dreadful endless march of time itself. The red sun burns heavy at the horizon, that ever-present reminder that slow ends are the most terrible. She takes a seat on the step and looks down at the unmoving body of her once-sister.  
  
"I crafted you from dust," she says at last, her voice hoarse after the Word's sheer power scraped it raw, "And to dust you shall return."  
  
She remembers another sister from a far-gone life who also had once been full of vitality and passion, and who also looked stiff and unreal when claimed by death.  
  
+  
  
A long time ago in a faraway land, she was a girl named Susan. She had two brothers, and a sister named Lucy. She had hopes and fears and dreams.  
  
And that ought to count for something.  
  
+  
  
The imperial palace of Charn sits at the top of a cliff where once, she likes to imagine, it had overlooked the sea.  
  
The oceans of this world dried up a long time ago. Now, the base of the cliff is a large, dirty, crumbling city. It stank of blood and death even before she spoke the Word. That stench has become so overpowering she conjures a wind to carry it away to the east.  
  
"I outlasted you," she says. And then she returns to her throne, and sits.

* * *

  
_two._  
  
There were many long nights after the second return from Narnia when Susan stared up at the ceiling of her small school dorm room. She did not wonder what she did wrong, because she had lived enough years to know that the worst twists of fate are hardly ever the result of one’s own actions. But she did wonder what she could have done differently, to keep the door open. And she did wonder whether there was something she might do now, to open it again.

The Lion had given her instructions as a part of his farewell: to live and love and grow close to her own world. Susan had wanted to argue that Narnia was more her world than England, but she’d also known saying as much wouldn’t have done any good. And so she said her goodbyes, and she let the tears fall, and she stepped through the door with a heavy but resolute heart.

 _Grow close to your world,_ the Lion had said, and she repeated that to herself on those longest nights until it became a mantra she could turn to whenever the hopelessness grew too strong. It brought a sense of determination, a new quest, a focus for her life here in England.  
  
She was in America when the letter came, and Susan read the pain and resignation in her younger siblings’ accounts of their third and final trip. In the end, they also had been deemed _too old for Narnia_ , whatever that was supposed to mean. They also had received the same final command from the Lion. Reading this missive repeatedly through the night, again Susan thought: _What might I do now?_  
  
And again she thought: _Grow close to your world._  
  
+  
  
There were witches in America, as there are witches in all worlds.  
  
+

“You’re different,” said Lucy. Susan had barely taken one step off the boat gangplank before her sister was there with a ferocious hug and these two accusatory words. It was quite a lot to deal with.

But then, Lucy always had been a lot to deal with, and Susan loved her for it. “I am different,” she said lightly, and pried Lucy’s arms away. “America was good for me. It put things into perspective.”

The crowd at the docks was immense and chaotic today, and there was little opportunity for discussion as they wove their way through. But every time Susan looked back, she caught the concerned expression on her sister’s face.

So at last, Susan put out her arm and pulled Lucy to her side, and whispered down into her ear: “I haven’t changed that much. Promise.”

And Lucy looked up into her eyes. “But you’re losing the look of Narnia,” she said. “And you smell of a different magic.”

+

The American witches had written of Susan to their sister circle in London. Susan travelled there alone, and was met at the station by a young apprentice named Diane.

“It’s about time there was another witch my age here in the city,” said Diane, linking arms with Susan as they walked to meet the circle elders. “It gets tiresome being regarded as a child, sometimes.”

“I can well relate,” admitted Susan.

Diane looked at her a little funny, and then said, “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?” And then they were at the door and Susan was too busy learning all the names of the elder witches to question what exactly Diane had meant by that.

+

Life began to settle into routine. Susan took a job with the government, and shared a flat with Diane, and studied magic in the evenings, and practiced magic on weekends. At first, it was difficult and frustrating, and then it was easy and as natural as breathing. At last, Diane brought the news that the circle was impressed by her progress and wished to confirm her status as a proper English witch.

She had told her siblings about the path she had chosen, and she wrote to them again now even though a part of her feared what they might say. Peter had never understood what drew her to the arts. Edmund understood but did not want to. Lucy did not try to understand, but she hugged her sister tight at the end of each visit anyway.  
  
They died too soon, her siblings. Susan screamed curses to the sky and wished to join them.  
  
+  
  
But everyone knows a witch does not ever really die.

* * *

 

 _three._  
  
Jadis has been asleep for longer than she had ruled Charn when the children from Earth ring the bell. Its sound cuts through her, sharp and hot, hissing against the Word that hums within her blood like an echo of a past scream she still remembers.

She leads the children from the hall and stands out of doors to look upon this world one last time. This is a world she has crafted and shaped and bent to her will. This is a world that ultimately, she lost. There is nothing left for her here; even the bodies of her people have crumbled to dust and blown away on the wind.

She bids the children take her home. And they do—first to London and then—  
  
Then—  
  
+  
  
The song of the stars calls to her, familiar and new all at once. She longs to respond, but the Word is strong in her blood and it opposes everything the song of creation stands for. These two sounds ripple and fight inside her. She feels as though their dissonance is tearing her apart.  
  
She feels as though, finally, she might die.  
  
The Lion can hear the Word inside her, and he hates it, and he hates that she is here at the beginning of everything. In all her days of longing to return, she could not have imagined such hate, not from Him, and she runs from it.  
  
She runs, and she runs, and she runs.  
  
+  
  
_Help me,_ she cries to the new-formed wind, and the stars scream at her.  
  
+  
  
A long time ago, in a past life, a professor told Susan the story of creation. He told her of the stars and the land, the animals and the peoples, the Lion and the lamppost. He told her of a walled garden at the edge of the world, and of the magical fruit within.

She runs through the day and the night and the next day, until one last hill stands before her. She climbs the hill and reaches the wall and turns away from the sign on its gates. She stands atop the stone wall with her back to the garden and her eyes to the world.

Only then does she allow herself to think: _I have made it. I have made it back. I have come home._

Then the pain of the Word surges again within her, and she drops down into the garden.

She is certain now. The Word is everything this world is not, and this world is everything the Word cannot stand. Creation and Destruction war within her soul, but for the first time in a long time she does not want to welcome death. She has finally returned to the world she calls home, and she is not ready to leave it yet.

And so Jadis plucks an apple from the tree and bites into its flesh. She tastes the magic in its juice. And the Word’s power finally begins to ease.

* * *

  
_four._  
  
There are four thrones in the castle by the sea. Jadis stands on the parapet of her ice tower and looks across a frozen wasteland towards the east. To herself, she thinks:  
  
_When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone,_  
_Sit at Cair Paravel in throne,_  
_The evil time will have only begun._  
  
+  
  
In the earliest days of this world, she meets the Lion again in the Northernmost lands and recoils from the blankness of his stare.  
  
"You don't remember me," she says. She wishes she could feel relief or sadness but instead, she is filled only with regret.  
  
His reply is as soft as a rockslide. “I do not know you.”  
  
“You will,” she tells him. “Once, you loved me.”

But the Lion cares not for the memories or prophecies of a witch. He has come bearing the summons of his father, the Emperor Beyond the Sea, and these are summons that no one may disobey.  
  
+  
  
_You know the Deep Magic,_ says the Emperor.  
  
The Word stirs within her as he speaks, its very essence eating away at her soul like acid. The apple has eased her pain but it has not removed the poison. She knows of nothing that could ever remove such poison.  
  
"I am of the Deep Magic now," she says. "And sometimes, I think the Deep Magic is of me."  
  
+  
  
The peoples of this world call her, among many other things, the Emperor’s Hangman because the right of execution has been granted to her and her alone. Jadis does it to appease the Deep Magic that dwells within the foundations of the world. She does it to appease the Deep Magic that dwells within her veins. She does it because, somehow, she still cares to keep this world alive despite all the times it has rejected her.

There are witches in every world, and she has become the mother of witches in Narnia. To the most powerless women of this new world, she gifts the rituals and spells first learned in a little flat in a forgotten corner of London. These women, these followers, take her lessons and her magics out across the lands to change the world to their liking.

“Let me gift you my power,” she tells Helen and Sorra and Amell and Swanwhite, and so many other queens. And then the Tree of Protection falls and Jadis thinks, _If you want it done right, do it yourself,_ and takes her first step into Narnia in a thousand years.

* * *

_Five._

On the floor of her flat, in the midst of laying out a pentagram of chalk and hoarded candles, Susan asked, “Are all prophecies simply the result of time jumping?”

“That’s what the elders say,” answered Diane. She had a mixing bowl in her lap, stirring the brew with the same wooden spoon they’d used to mix pancake batter that morning. “That is,” she amended, “Not always actual jumping. But some of the ladies have gotten fairly good at throwing their minds forward for a quick peek.”

“So they are visions from the future, then.” Susan sat back on her heels, and then reached for a handful of petals to sprinkle within the circle.

Diane hummed in thought. “Not quite,” she said slowly. “Visions come to us. But when the ladies peek ahead, it’s like they’re really there. They aren’t just seeing it, they’re experiencing it. And then in the present, they have memories of the future.”

“That must be hard,” said Susan. She stood up to survey her work and then, satisfied, stepped out of the circle. “Now, shall we summon that storm?”

+

As Jadis of Narnia, all her memories are of the future. She stands in a throne-room of ice and listens to her spies report rumours of a prophecy she first spoke centuries before.

_Two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve._

When a hundred years have passed, she rides her sleigh down into the wood to find a boy who longs for sweets. Once, he had been kin--but too many thousands of years have passed and she does not think her Edmund would look up to her anymore if he knew what she’d done. The knowledge of this weighs on her heavily as she sends the boy back to the other world for his siblings.

But her Edmund is not this Edmund. Her Edmund, no matter the disapproval, would not have climbed the icy mountain path to turn his siblings in for a taste of sugar. Her Edmund would have been stronger than the magic she’d brewed into each bite. Her Edmund would have stayed away, and protected his family, and fought against her darkness with every shred of willpower within him.

Her Edmund would learn to do so because of this Edmund’s mistake.

 _Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone,_ she thinks as her sleigh cuts through melting snow. She fingers the stone knife in the pocket of her robe and wonders if it would be possible to break the cycle.

Then the soldiers of Aslan’s camp arrive, and the boy is taken away.

+

“There is little left for me in this world,” Susan had told Diane once. “My entire family is gone. I did my part and became close to this world--and for what? What good was any of this magic?”

Diane was silent for a very long time. “There are deeper magics than this,” she said at last. “If you are truly that unhappy here, there are magics that will carry you across the worlds.”

Susan heard what Diane did not say. “I didn’t mean it that way. You make me happy. But this is not truly my world. It does not matter that I was born here. It does not matter that the Lion has made up his mind. My soul calls for another place.”

“Then I will help you find it,” decided Diane. “However deep the magic lies, I will help you find it.”

+

Each world has witches, just as each world has a Deep Magic. They drew the circle and lay the charms and spoke the ancient words of their foremothers. And then Susan picked up the uncut jade stone from the centre of the circle and felt the waters of the world-pool wash over her head.

* * *

  
  
_six._  
  
On the night all her years have been leading towards, Jadis lifts the stone knife above her head and remembers hiding among the trees in terror. She stares out into the shadows, unable to see beyond the ring of the torch-light and yet certain for a moment that she has found their hiding spot. _If only you knew,_ she thinks to her past self, and then she drives the knife down with all her strength.  
  
The Deep Magic dwells within her blood, and it must be appeased.  
  
+  
  
Sitting on her throne in the dead city of Charn, Jadis remembers waking with her sister to the crack of a stone table.  
  
+

In a little London flat, Susan hears the echo of that crack and remembers the horror of the preceding night. She remembers looking out through the bushes to watch the White Witch and her followers. She remembers the chill running down her back as, for one brief and horrible instant, the Witch raised her eyes and seemed to look through the foliage into Susan’s very soul.

That night had been terrible but now, when Susan feels most alone and angry, she thinks she does not entirely blame the Witch. She thinks that she might have liked to hold the stone knife in her own hands and feel, just for a moment, the power of an entire world.

* * *

 

 


End file.
